Stefan's Epiphany
by typedamon
Summary: "It fills you up so much, that when it's gone, the gaping chasm of 'what once was' that it leaves you with is so painful, it feels like a personal oblivion." Set 4x22 when Stefan is listening in to Elena's love confession to Damon. (one-shot.)


To love is one of the most powerful feelings on the planet. It is beautiful. It is enchanting. It is consuming. Love opens up your soul, makes you feel things that you would think were humanly impossible to feel. And as a vampire, that feeling can knock the breath from your body. It can wind you. It makes you smile, because you know you will never experience something as wonderful and beautiful as love. You feel invincible, when you hold the one you love in your arms. It feels as if nothing can come between you. When you are with them, the rest of the world ceases to exist. It's just you, and her, and the love.

But sometimes… sometimes things happen. And you lose them. And the love? The love is ripped away. It is torturous. There is nothing more agonizing than a love that is uncertain, a love that isn't returned. You feel like you're wasting that feeling on someone, when you could be loving someone who returns it in the most wholesome manner. Yet at the same time, you can't help but keep loving someone, even if they continually rip your heart out, time after time.

Elena made her choice. And the minute I heard the words leave her mouth, it was like a stake that was wedged into my body. It broke my skin, stabbed into the layers of muscle. It shuddered through my bones. It pierced my soul. There it remained. Every movement, no matter how small, was torture. Everything I did, reminded me of her. That was when I knew just how much I loved her. I couldn't see a life without Elena. She was there, present in everything I saw and everything I did.

For the past few years or so that I had returned to Mystic Falls, Elena had been the reason that drove me to do everything I did. And she had left me. But I wasn't angry. I found that I could quite hate her. I couldn't hate Damon either. Somehow it seemed wrong, that the person who had tormented her so much when they had first crossed paths had managed to find his way to being her saving grace.

And sadly, I knew that he had changed. And it was because of her. Nothing I had done over the long years of our extensive life had managed to plunge feeling back into the numb black hole that was Damon Salvatore. Then Elena had come along, and had made him feel. It had made him care. He had committed acts so horrific that they could never truly be forgiven… but now, he was redeeming himself. Slowly but surely, those little wedges of humanity that were sparking up within him were what was winning Elena over.

I was blinded by memories of her touch, those soft fingertips trailing across my skin, her hand winding it's way through my hair as she pulled my mouth to hers. The way that she had never given up on me. Even when I was lost inside myself, nowhere in sight, Elena had managed to reach me. She had pulled me back out to the light. She had loved me. I had loved her.

When she had plunged off of Wickery Bridge in the icy depths of the river below, it had been the beginning of our end. She had woken up as someone new, someone reminiscent of the girl that had been left behind in the river but not quite the same. A shadow of her former self, I found that like she had been able to connect with Damon on a level that I couldn't, he could now do the same for her. He could save her.

That was when it had changed. And now, I was just realising it. With a pain in my chest that was excruciating in it's intensity and a burning sensation beginning behind my eyes, I realised that love is a wholesome thing. It fills you up so much, that when it's gone, the gaping chasm of 'what once was' that it leaves you with is so painful, it feels like a personal oblivion. Without love, life is pain. And I know that my Elena, the Elena who went off of that bridge that night, would never have allowed me to feel that torture.

_Goodbye, my human Elena._

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_A/N: Just a very short one-shot I suppose to get myself back into the swing of writing. Had a lengthy absence from the world of fanfic due to exams and being busy with my horses and stuff but now I am back :-) It's fairly awful but hey-ho, I am veeery rusty and I was never particularly great to begin with, but I hope you enjoyed this. R+R if you please! ~typedamon x_


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